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What type of information is in the GISS publications database?
The database includes citations to documents written by GISS researchers. They are primarily scholarly articles which have appeared in refereed scientific journals, but the database also include some NASA Tech Reports, book chapters, conference proceedings papers, graduate student dissertations, etc. All entries include at least one author who was affiliated with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, either while conducting the research described or later in his or her scientific career.
About two-thirds of the entries also include links to copies of the actual publications. Almost all of these are complete copies, but a few are in preprint form and might be missing figures. Almost all are in PDF (Acrobat), but a few are in gzip-compressed Postscript. Either format should be easily viewable on most workstations, Macs and PCs.
The publications homepage includes a "Simple Search" form. If you type in more than one word, the simple search assumes a logical "or" between your terms. For example, entering "global warming" means that the search will look for documents with "global" or "warming" in their citations and abstracts. A scoring system is used, so citations containing both words would be scored higher.
Also available via the navigation buttons on the Publications pages is an "Advanced Search". This search allows you somewhat finer control of the results, as you can require that certain terms appear in certain fields, e.g., search for papers published in 2004 containing "Mars" in the abstract. It also allows you to specify the sorting order.
Note: Neither search option allows for searching of words in the complete publication texts. At best they offer searching of abstracts.
When you are examining a citation or abstract, look for one of the following hyperlinks:
A "Download PDF" or "Download Postscript" link leads directly to a copy of the paper, and the link will probably give an indication of the size of the download. A "Go to Paper" link leads indirectly to a copy of the paper, probably on a site outside the GISS domain. If you do not see one of these links, a copy of the report is not currently available.
How do I save a copy of a report to my disk?
With Postscript and PDF documents, your browser is probably already configured to save them to disk or to open the appropriate helper application. If not, then either right-click (Windows) or control-click (Macintosh) on the download link until a pop-up menu appears; look on that menu for an option named something like "Save this link as..." or "Download link target...".
Internet Explorer for Windows may attempt to display PDF documents in the browser window via a browser plug-in. If you are using this browser, you must right-click on the download link in order to force it to download the file to your hard drive.
You need a copy of Adobe Reader or any other PDF viewing program. You can download Adobe Reader for free.
How do I view a Postscript report?
You need a Postscript viewer such as the free programs GSview, ghostview, and MacGS. Check shareware archives appropriate to your computer and operating system. You can also just save a copy of the report locally and queue it to a Postscript printer.
When I click on a Postscript report, I get garbage on the screen!
Your web browser is trying to display the file in the browser window rather than download it to the hard drive. You must force the browser to save the paper locally.
How do I uncompress Postscript files?
If your browser does not automatically uncompress the files, you will need to manually instruct a separate uncompression program to do so. We have found Aladdin Software's free StuffIt Expander useful in this regard as it can work with several different compression schemes.
When I view a Postscript report, the fonts seem impossibly small!
You probably do not have the correct fonts installed on your machine. Contact your systems administrator for assistance. The report should print without problem on your Postscript printer.
After the cover page(s), the first couple of pages of a Postscript report do not appear, and the report starts on page 2 or 3.
This is due to how some publications are constructed. They are actually many separate Postscript files, concatenated together. This confuses some Postscript previewers, but they should print without problem.
I see an interesting citation, but there's no link to a copy of the publication.
If you see an abstract of interest for which the complete paper is not available on-line, check the GISS personnel list for the GISS-affiliated author's address. You may write him or her and request a reprint copy. If the author is no longer with GISS, you can check your nearest university or research library to see if it has the appropriate journal in the stacks. Also, you might write "Library, NASA GISS, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025" and request a reprint.
How do I get one of my papers listed in the GISS database?
First, you have to be a member of the GISS staff.
If you are, you can use the form to submit a complete citation and abstract. If you wish to provide a complete paper rather than just an abstract-only submission, a PDF copy is preferred. Contact the webmaster for assistance.
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